Bob Cassidy – The Messing Effect

Wolf Messing (1899 -1974) is often said to have been the most talented mind reader in the world. A native of Poland, Messing moved to Russia just prior to the outbreak of World War II. His decision to emigrate followed a performance, during which he predicted that Germany would be defeated and Hitler would die if Poland were invaded. Hitler, a devout believer in psychic phenomena, showed his appreciation for Messing’s psychic gifts by placing a bounty of 200,000 marks on his head. After the war he worked for many years as a performer, and it has been suggested that he was one of Josef Stalin’s advisors. Those said to have successfully tested him include Stalin, Mohandas Gandhi, Sigmund Freud and Albert Einstein.

This is a classic Bob Cassidy tour de force to replicate impossible appearing effects with very practical and straight forward methods and ruses from the mentalists tool chest. This ebook also holds a lot of interesting history as well as Bob’s comments, particularly if you are not familiar with Wolf Messing. But the heart and soul of this work are Bob’s methods for Messing’s “Stage Demonstration” and “Passing the Guards”.

Messing’s “Stage Demonstration” goes like this. Audience members write on pieces of paper a sequence of steps the performer has to complete. These slips are folded and given to a committee who chooses one slip. The performer never sees the slip but is able to mentally receive the instructions and complete them on stage. A typical test could look like this:

You will learn Bob’s method which does not require any gimmicks, confidants, or much other trickery. It is very cleanly built and requires one off beat secret action.

Messing’s “Passing the Guards” is too good to true. If you read the effect you will think this is impossible to do – a legend – but not reality. The effect goes something like this. Messing is locked inside a room that has only one door and no windows or other ways to escape from it. Guards are placed outside the door to prevent his escape. Nevertheless, Messing steps out of the room without the guards noticing it.

Of course, impossible! Right? Not true. Read Bob’s solution, which is really a stunt rather than a regular effect. And remember, Bob has pulled this off successfully. You should probably only do this once. You will need a friend or helper and you will need a good amount of setup to make this work. However, the real beauty of this method is that you can abort the stunt all the way to the last few seconds with none the wiser. That means if it doesn’t work the first time you can try it again until everything is just right. Done for the right people you will attain legend status. Being able to walk out of a room without anybody knowing when they have seen you in the room just before it was guarded is simply only possibly if you have supernatural powers – or is it?

1st edition 2004; 44 pages.
word count: 16091 which is equivalent to 64 standard pages of text